As I mentioned in our first lesson of the FINDS Research process, students need guidance implementing this process each step of the way due to its complexity. FINDS is an acronym describing its five step research process:

Focus

Investigate

Note

Develop

Score

Following the Stripling Model of Inquiry, FINDS allows students to investigate, construct, express, and reflect on research. For this lesson, we will discuss the final step: Score Presentation. Again, I use my Promethean FINDS Flip Chartt, loaded with FINDS model background information. I introduce the FINDS five step process, discuss our goal and rubric, and listed what we already know about the research process from our past experiences.

This is our final step, so we discuss the area of my Score Flip Chart that addresses Scoring Presentation (Score). Students learn that they score using both the presentation rubric and research rubric for this assignment. Rubrics provide both qualitative and quantitative information about student learning.

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Self-Assessments are necessary to improve one's abilities. Students are aware that each goal I have presented in class have accompanying rubrics or scales to self-assess one's growth in the learning progression. Similarly, Score in the FINDS research process is a time for students to self-check on their research progress as well as to reflect on improvements that they need to effectively research the next topic.

I give them a Score Planning Template for this activity. I modeled filling out this template prior to independent practice. I selected three criteria from the Score Presentation Guidelines that I would base this self assessment and wrote them onto the upper portion of the template as my target goals. Then, I discussed each criteria and my progress reaching those targets. I checked off the ones that I felt I mastered. Then, I wrote areas that need improvements on the bottom portion of the template. Once students had observed my self-assessment, I gradually release ownership to them to conduct independent self-assessments.

Students learn how to make an evaluative criteria to gauge the quality of their final product, reflect on their strengths and weaknesses in the research process, and make recommendations for improving the research process. In this way, students gain ownership of their learning.

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My class has frequently conducted self-assessments using rubrics. In this next step, I ask students to view their oral presentation that I videotaped during the score presentation step of the FINDS process and share their self-assessments using both the presentation rubric and the research rubric. I explain that the presentation rubric is separate from the research rubric, because it focuses on their oral presentation performance. I ask a student volunteer to model a self-assessment with my guidance. As we view the Student Presentation, she rated her performance using the presentation rubric. I guided her to use the qualitative descriptions of the rubric as she discusses the reasons she gave the quantitative scores for her performance. Then, we discuss the content of her research using the research rubric in the same fashion. After this demonstration, students begin their presentations.

Students also explained how they can improve in order to reach the goal. Goal Attainment and Team Member Effectiveness. Afterwards, we discussed whether the contributions of team members directly effect the team's goal attainment. Effective collaboration is important for this project to succeed.